by Earnest Long
he would not always do it immediately. And if it happened at mealtimes, then they had to leave their plates behind them and just go to the next room. The meal would be missed, considered over and nobody would talk about it or ask for anything else to eat.
On this occasion, the girl was finishing her breakfast without undue incident when her grandparents asked her why she had written about their kitchen in one of her essays in the class.
This was in between trains coming that they asked. And the trains going along the track that you could hear quite loudly meant you could only talk for a few minutes each time. But this was although there were some longer gaps for 5 or 10 minutes that you could have more of a decent conversation in. It was at all times of day trains would go along the track. And the trains did not necessarily leave longer gaps at any particular time of day. Perhaps, it was a bit longer later in the evening but not until then.
Her grandfather had a train timetable and so he knew when he could speak and when there would be gaps in the trains. Still, his niece had not yet been able to understand the train timetables. She complained that he had not explained them to her very well and not for even a few minutes more than he had done that might be necessary but that he had demurred from doing. Yet her grandfather did not see that the train timetables needed any special or long explanation. Possibly, he was right or she was. It was hard to tell. Really, it just caused an argument. And nobody and not her grandmother either when she was with them both although she might have said some in private was able to intervene between them. This was when her grandfather thought that she was old enough for several years to understand train timetables and as well, she had been top in her maths class before she left regular school that offered no explanation either. Maybe, something was seriously wrong. Somebody had no matter suggested that she might just be a bit short sighted that explained it. Yet the girl refused to wear glasses. As well, mysteriously she had said that nobody had poked fun at her ever and nor in her last few months when at regular school. This was for being short sighted or anything else.
"I didn't say anything," she exclaims.
This was to a grandfather's own exclamation about whether she had been writing of their family's private kitchen meals in her class.
"Really, I have to write something about my life for the teacher. Also, it is for a club. And if I knew more things such as if I had done a good job that was exciting in some way and not the one I do have, then I could say more than just writing about my domestic situation. But one of the classroom teachers said that it was good to write about domesticity and many famous writers wrote like that."
She leaves saying she's has to go to her writers' club early because she's meeting somebody before the class.
Then she says, "And I don't expect an argument about it when I get back in either."
A week later, scribbling furiously on her paper notebook before she gets out her laptop, the girl looks out the window to focus and think. The girl is using material that she has from visiting her uncle's farm the previous weekend.
A Tomboy from the town stays in the farm and out of total boredom, she runs up and down the stairs. It is like a game she is playing. Her aunt is a very small woman although her uncle is tall and thin. She is a burly girl and her uncle now tells her that the cottage will have to be pulled down. And they say that the previous inhabitants were only short people like her aunt. Her aunt is now in her 60s as far as anyone can tell. This is although she is not telling herself. She had married her husband, the girl's uncle in a ceremony still celebrated in the village. Her aunt was one of the last of her race and now even the cottage will have been pulled down. The cottage had stood unaided since before the 12th century. At least, that was before brawny girls had come from the town that did exercises and went to gyms.
Another time, she is on the farm and she's told there is an ancient thrashing machine that they've only just discovered in a barn that they are renovating to sell to a museum. The machine goes on early one morning just after dawn. And when the girl gets up at about 8 AM, her aunt tells her that two farm hands had been killed in it. Feeling it might be a bit odd but still wanting to ask and feeling safe to do so to her dear uncle and aunt that would never hurt anyone least of all girls, she wonders aloud as to how it could actually work so soon. This was when she had heard previously contradicting this that there was some months work to do on it. She is told to be quiet. And she's told this as well when it could be 20 years until she was a countrywoman if she stayed here. Eventually, her uncle says as the afternoon cloud rolls in that no farmhands are missing and so the thing must have been an illusion of ghosts from a previous time. This was not explained to her for some time by anyone that there were no human people involved. She wonders why and feels a bit aggrieved. And she imagines that she is only in the story as some kind of a nursemaid who doesn't catch everything from where she is sitting. It is unfortunate that she is worried by stories thinking that ghosts are real and can affect people's everyday lives. As well, that is what they're talking about but not involving her.
Having written up the notes for this, she then writes another story. There is the train crash where the train comes off its rails and down an embankment. She escapes with her father driving them. No matter, despite the inspiration of the embankment outside her window that you might imagine a train could crash down, she puts her laptop away for now. This is feeling the creative juices have run out at least temporarily.
A few weeks since she walked out of the creative writing club, she feels an urge to tell her grandparents about it. She first describes herself as being expelled from the club for not paying attention to her teachers and somehow or other not writing what they really wanted.
Then, animatedly, she described how she went back and met the head teacher. The headmaster, a severe man with grey lacquered hair in an old-fashioned headmaster's office asks her if she has anything to say. When she doesn't say anything, he says that she can ask him or the teachers anything before she leaves the school. Really, she can do if there's anything she has to say or would like to ask him or any of the other teachers about anything. But she can't keep writing horror stories when she's not in that class and so she has to leave.
She says, "What's a horror story?"
"It's too late for that now," says the headmaster. "You're due to be executed tomorrow."
When she doesn't laugh, he says, "You can be expelled for at least not laughing at my jokes. And we could consider executing you later."
She is a bit nonplussed and tearful and he then says, "I'm going to have to let you go anyway because we can't have grown women here who still cry like girls."
When he said 'I'm going to have let you go anyway', the teachers laughed. But when he said the last, they didn't at all.
"That is actually true!"
So the girl leaves out the school gates. This is just as if she had never learnt anything from when she was last there as a teenager. Or she went to a similar school. She will not see the course out and she has not been out at all during this summer. Really, she hasn't been when she's been inside writing on her laptop and on her paper pads. She goes out the school gates past the scorched summer earth that is brown dry mud in places. Now, it does seem a bit childish. And she goes out once again from the school and into the big bad world that there is outside.
The End
